discussion post #6

[Chester Hunter]

Hebrew is part of the semitic language family, so it shares many similarities with the most often spoken modern semitic language, arabic. One of the biggest similarities I have noticed while studying both languages is how the basic posessive works. In Hebrew, you put the word "sheli" after the object that you possess, but occasionally it can be shortened to just "i" as in "achi:" ach (bro) and i (of mine). Arabic works similarly , by placing a "i" after the possessed object, such as in ach which is brother just like in hebrew. Speaking of brothers, familal nouns tend to be the most ancient in any language, so it makes sense that hebrew and arabic share many of their familial words, such as brother, sister, father. Going back to the modern era, hebrew takes quite a few slang loanwords from arabic, although I am not sure whether this is truly because of the shared linguistic family tree or more a product of geopolitics in the region. Words like yallah (lets go) and majnun (crazy) are both arabic words but used constantly in Israel, in fact it would sound kind of weird to say the hebrew versions of those words.